This project will examine economic and demographic determinants of the distribution of population in metropolitan areas in order to test several important hypotheses concerning population movement and to make quantitative predictions concerning the effects of a number of policies currently being implemented or considered. In particular, central city-suburb population movement and various policies aimed at altering it will be examined. The effects of policies affecting commuting costs, income distribution, and public school financing will also be examined. The analysis begins with an examination of the behavior of the individual household. In choosing a residential location, a household is making decisions along several dimensions; tenure, location, structural type, and neighborhood and community type. In making this choice, households reveal their preferences for important determinants of population distribution such as public services, neighborhood amenities, and acessibility to employment and other activities. A general decision model of residential choice will thus be employed which takes into account the many dimensions of the choice problem and which is empirically estimable employing data on choices actually made. This model breaks down the overall residential choice decision into several component decisions, each of which will be examined by estimating a conditional logic model of the respective choice being made. The data are primarily drawn from a survey of 29,000 households in the San Francisco Bay Area, and have been supplemnted by data on public services, neighborhood amenities, and accessibility. The empirical results will permit comparison of the importance of determinants of population movement across households of different races, sizes, incomes, and life-cycle classes. They will also permit the direct examination of the relative importance of various household characteristics with respect to each specific choice made. Finally, and most importantly, the results will be employed to make specific quantitative predictions of population movement.